Alders have two catkins (male and female) that form in the autumn, are dormant over winter and the female is wind pollinated with pollen from the male catkin in spring. Here two male catkin are hanging down on long stems. The others may be female catkins. I will have to observe further…..

Perhaps one of the woodferns that dried out and died. Most woodferns that I know are evergreens.

Another milkweed caught in the act of dispersing its seeds during a snow flurry….

One of the fall asters against the textured snow ….

This has been happening with increasing regularity, apparently due to aging equipment that is failing.

Big Lake is getting its first covering of ice, indicating that the water temperature underneath the ice ranges from +4ºC to 0ºC. The surface water temperature at the edge of the ice is 0ºC. I don’t have long enough arms to measure the temperature of the water out in the middle of the lake.

Meshaw Falls on the North Channel of the French River. I know that it is fashionable nowadays to try to emulate some of Ansel Adam’s work by converting moving water to milky water. I am not a fan of that cliché, preferring to use enough motion blur to indicate movement, while preserving the structure of the water flow. This was shot at 1/100 second…..just a long enough shutter interval to let some motion blur animate the photograph.

I made this photo because these strange objects are common on ponds when they freeze. Too small for otter or beaver breathing holes. They remind me of dendrites of the human brain. [If you can understand that link you are a better person than I am, Charlie Brown!] (Maybe Oldtimers Disease is settling in on me!) …

I drove almost to the end of Bekanon Road of the Henvey Inlet Reserve on November 26 to see one of Herbert Fisheries tugs tied up at a dock on the southern point (as I looked west).

This is from the sand beach about 1 nautical mile west of where Henvey Inlet narrows.

Homemade bench at the above beach:

The last of the blackberry leaves on the Beckanon Road….

Just after I made this photo I met a nephew of the late Art Solomon, an Ojibway elder who did important work in the Canadian Justice System, who wrote Songs for the People, and who was a big help in the writing of the Science North production of Shooting Star , a 3-D, 70mm, laser enhanced story of a young girl’s spirit-quest in the Sudbury Impact Crater. Not surprisingly the man was quietly parked in his car, observing nature and listening for the bugle call of one of the elk that he had heard there earlier. We had a very enjoyable chat.

A classic shot of the Mackerel sky and its reflection from in front of St Amants Restaurant and Waterfront Inn. Those post anchor the dockage in the summer, where Floatboat II spends it time ashore.

This is the good ship, Adeline, named after the mother of the man who made it and who still lives aboard from time to time.

The Still River as it empties into Byng Inlet from Old Legion Road.

Just upstream, left of the above, a family of beaver are laying in a huge stock of feed, stripping the far shore of birch and poplar. It is right next to their lodge.

I did a little research to photograph the rising of the (almost) full moon on February 14 at Straight Lake from Hwy 69 between the Bekanon Rd and Key River. I looked at the azimuth angle (the angle measured clockwise along the horizon from true north) and plotted it on a Google Earth image of the location. It looked like it would rise above the far shore, to above the three spruce trees in the right foreground of this photo:

This poplar leaf is showing the removal of green chlorophyll as abscission is well along its process:

The tamarack (aka hackmatack, eastern larch, black larch, red larch, or American larch) is changing from green to gold to orange. Here is a close-up of tamarack needles on a foggy morning (click on the picture for a better close-up of the droplets):

And here are photos of tamaracks along Hwy 529:

Here the leatherleaf plants are showing their characteristic fall maroon as the final leaves on the birch and aspens are falling:

It has been damp and calm for the last few days. Not at all like the typical November storms that stir up Georgian Bay this time of the year. The calm wet air, sometimes combined with water surfaces, give some opportunities to capture some interesting scenes. Some examples:

The “back road” across from the farm…

The pond between Grundy Lake PP and the Pakesley CPR Crossing…

Cattails at the pond …

Hwy 522 looking East towards Pakesley Crossing …

Pond from Hwy 69 north of Key River…

Byng Inlet from Britt, with , Sedges, Cattails and Canada Rushes in the foreground…